Is the Catholic Church in the US too tolerant of white nationalism? [UPDATED]

Update August 17, 2020 2:55 pm CDT: I revised the post to give more emphasis to Martin's criticism of the bishops - and their apparent failure, so far, to respond.

 At National Catholic Reporter, Christopher White reports on a controversy centered on an article which appeared in Sojourners, a progressive magazine founded and run (until the last few days - see below) by Evangelical activist Jim Wallis:

The controversy surrounds the article, first published online under the headline "The Catholic Church has a Visible White-Power Faction" and appearing in the August issue of the print magazine under the title "Harboring a Culture of Hate." The essay was penned by Eric Martin who teaches religion at the University of California Los Angeles and was arrested for countering white supremacist's protests  in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017.

The Sojourners article by Martin is available here.  It's provocative and not flawless but on the whole I didn't find it easy to dismiss.  It should provoke some soul-searching on the part of Catholics and their leaders.  Much of it highlights Catholics (or, in some cases, people who were raised Catholic) who also are active in white racist hate groups.  That there are such people is something I wasn't previously particularly aware, but I don't find it especially surprising: there are tens of millions of American Catholics, and they cover an entire spectrum of political beliefs, some of them surely drifting into the marginal, the loony and the dangerous.  

The words "conservative" and "liberal", when used in a religious context, don't always align perfectly with the political meaning of those words - but the political and religious contexts aren't mutually exclusive, either.  Martin does a good job illustrating the intersection of conservative Catholicism and white supremacy:

In 2017, an alliance of the KKK, neo-Nazis, and the alt-right did much of their planning for the Unite the Right rally [in Charlottesville in 2017] in chat rooms that have since been made public by the media outlet Unicorn Riot. One of the more popular chat rooms was designated specifically for Catholics to explore the connections between their church and the rally. “No cultural Christians allowed,” its heading read. It was reserved for “dedicated” Catholics only and named after Nicholas J. Fuentes, a Catholic member of the neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa. Fuentes is an online influencer with 90,000 followers on social media; he was present at Charlottesville. Across all servers, more than 14,000 posts related to Catholicism were released in the aftermath of the event, and an early post captures their spirit: “I’m baptized Catholic [and] ready for a crusade.”

Here Catholics discussed everything from their favorite saints to their thoughts on Pope Urban II. They talked of “how to defend proper Catholicism” and shared links to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter. They saluted “Sieg heil!” to each other. They went from joking about the murder of Heather Heyer, the anti-racist activist who was run over in Charlottesville by a neo-Nazi, to singing “Ave Maria” together. They discussed the merits of Mein Kampf, identified themselves as “Charles Coughlin Roman Catholics” (after the 1930s Catholic radio demagogue), encouraged genocide against Jews, advertised the anti-Semitic podcast The Daily Shoah, and confessed their allegiance to what they call the “14 words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

Troubling stuff.

More controversially, Martin insists that the Catholic hierarchy is insufficiently committed to combating white supremacy: 

WHEN THE U.S. Catholic bishops gathered to draft a document on race in the wake of the 2017 white terrorist rally in Charlottesville, Va., Bishop Anthony Taylor of Little Rock, Ark., submitted an amendment to condemn the imagery of swastikas, Confederate flags, and nooses. The U.S. bishops deliberated and voted to reject it.

The document, “Open Wide Our Hearts,” was billed as “a pastoral letter against racism,” making its writers’ inability to adopt the amendment condemning three famously extreme symbols of racism a curious one. The bishops explained themselves by arguing that swastikas and nooses were already “widely recognized signs of hatred,” which would seem to make them all the easier to condemn. (Interestingly, they eschewed this logic when issuing their only condemnation, against violence toward police.) As for the Confederate flag, “some still claim it as a sign of heritage,” they argued.

To be clear: the US bishops' document in question deplores swastikas and nooses (but not confederate flags, apparently).   The sin, in Martin's eyes, is that deploring isn't enough; the bishops should have condemned them.  To be fair to Martin, it isn't just that the bishops overlooked an opportunity to come out more strongly against these symbols of white nationalism.  As quoted above, when the bishops deliberated over the document a couple of years ago, they voted down an amendment proposed by one of their own to condemn the symbols.  In other words, they had a chance to come out more strongly but they declined.

The details of that deliberation, and the reasons given by the bishops for rejecting the proposed amendment, aren't supplied by Martin in the Sojourners article, nor by White in his NCR report.  Absent that context, the reader of Martin's article is left to infer that the bishops harbor some sort of sympathy for white supremacists.  Knowing what I know about the bishops and what they teach (and what they genuinely believe), I don't find that inference credible, despite the damning way Martin reports the circumstances of the bishops' deliberation.  

This passage in Martin's article, which must be understood as a criticism of official church teaching, stirred up a strong negative reaction toward the article by Catholic groups, some of whom consider themselves allies of Wallis and Sojourners on justice and peace issues.  That in turn spawned a counter-reaction from those who insist that Martin has it right.  Wallis, who apparently has worked for decades to cultivate strong relationships with Catholic peace and justice organizations, was sufficiently stung by the criticisms to have Martin's article removed from the Sojourners' website.  That editorial decision in turn unleashed criticism both within and from outside the magazine, and led to the resignation of two Sojourners editors, both persons of color.  Wallis then reinstated the article, removed himself from editorial decision-making, and promised that Sojourners will be more transparent in its editorial processes and policies.  White's NCR article recounts the details of how the controversy unfolded and Sojourners multi-stage response.

The presence of white supremacists in the church certainly is of interest to me.  As I say, I wasn't previously particularly aware of it.  So Martin taught me something.  As a minister of the church, I will offer the view that white supremacist beliefs are wrong, and utterly inconsistent with Catholic beliefs regarding the rights and dignity of all people.  Martin has me wondering, What should the church do about Catholic white supremacists?  

But even more important is the criticism of the bishops.  When I went to the usccb.org website to search - fruitlessly - for an official response to the Sojourners article, the content on the landing page is "Confronting the Sin of Racism", with links to the document in question and a variety of other statements and resources.  I offer this as evidence of the bishops' good intentions regarding racism and white supremacy.  But that I was not able to find a response, indicates that the bishops either are unaware that their reputation has been impugned by Martin, or don't consider it sufficiently important to respond.  If the former is the case, someone needs to make them aware.  If the latter - then I disagree.  If the bishops' decision to reject the language of condemnation of white nationalist symbols was defensible, they should defend it.  Either way, the bishops should respond.  

Martin's article calls into question whether the bishops have spoken out as strongly against racism and white supremacy as is necessary for this historical moment.  The article also amounts to an indictment of them, and the Catholic church as a whole, for being overly comfortable with white supremacists in its midst.  And it at least suggests the possibility that some of the bishops actively support the policies and politics of white supremacy.   By implication, the church's bona fides as workers for peace and justice have been called into question.  All of this certainly warrants a response by the bishops.